Ma [Ying-jeou, ROC prez] has often said Taiwan can ill afford an arms race with an increasingly deep-pocketed Beijing, and his government recently postponed the procurement of two U.S. weapon systems due to what a ruling Nationalist lawmaker describes as lack of defense budget.

The reason for this labour shortage, and the sky-high wages that come with it, is simple: Australia, with a population of 22 million, does not have the workforce to exploit its enormous natural bounty -- at least not at the pace required to satisfy Asia's hunger for resources.

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It may seem odd that Australia, with 22 million people sharing a continent the size of Western Europe, is concerned about population. But the country is mostly arid, forcing about 90 percent of people to cram into 3 percent of the country. In 40 years, the population is projected to reach 36 million.

In major cities, infrastructure is already failing to keep up with population growth, and new suburbs are emerging without trains or hospitals. In the outback, the situation is far worse.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) found that by the second half of 2010, real wages had fallen 34.5 percent since the first half of 2006, when sanctions were imposed by Israel after Hamas, an Islamist group that now rules the Gaza Strip, [>>]won a Palestinian legislative election.

The UN says the full-on blockade began a year later.

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Gaza's pressure cooker atmosphere has been relieved since the fall of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak this year and a change in policy by Cairo, a party to the blockade with Israel, which now opens the southern border crossing at Rafah daily for civilian traffic, though [>] not for trade.